{"id":65047,"date":"2015-11-18T22:41:28","date_gmt":"2015-11-19T04:41:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=65047"},"modified":"2015-11-18T22:41:28","modified_gmt":"2015-11-19T04:41:28","slug":"murray-gives-himself-a-haircut-during-loss-to-nadal-at-atp-finals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2015\/11\/18\/murray-gives-himself-a-haircut-during-loss-to-nadal-at-atp-finals\/","title":{"rendered":"Murray gives himself a haircut during loss to Nadal at ATP finals"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Andy<\/a>
Andy Murray during his practice with coach Jonas Bjorkman (Photo taken from Andy Murray’s official Facebook fan page)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

LONDON – Andy Murray was struggling, both with his serve and his hair.<\/p>\n

He gave himself a little trim during a changeover in the first set, but on the court he found it difficult to improve.<\/p>\n

Taking advantage of it all was Rafael Nadal, who ended up with a 6-4, 6-1 win Wednesday for his second straight victory at the season-ending ATP finals and a spot in the semifinals.<\/p>\n

Murray and Nadal traded breaks to open the match, and then Nadal held to make it 2-1. During the changeover, the second-seeded Murray pulled out a pair of scissors and clipped off a few strands of hair.<\/p>\n

“I had some hair in my eye, and I just wanted to get rid of it,” said Murray, clearly annoyed with the line of questioning. “That literally took two seconds. That was it.”<\/p>\n

Nadal said he didn’t notice Murray’s actions, but laughed when he was told that Murray said his hair was bothering him.<\/p>\n

“Was not at the right time to know that,” Nadal said before praising Murray’s ingenuity with the scissors. “It’s a good solution.”<\/p>\n

Maybe it helped a bit, because Murray then held his serve. But soon Nadal was back on top, breaking to end the first set.<\/p>\n

With his hair in check, Murray’s serve started to cause some problems.<\/p>\n

He ended up with four double-faults, including two in a row during his first service game of the second set. When Murray missed the first serve of the following point, a fan in the crowd, presumably in favour of Nadal, shouted out “cinco” to note it was his fifth straight fault.<\/p>\n

The next serve went in, but a backhand that sailed wide gave Nadal a 2-0 lead as the Spaniard won nine of 10 points during that stretch.<\/p>\n

Murray ended up landing only 43 per cent of his first serves, and only 38 per cent in the second set.<\/p>\n

“From the middle till the end of the second set, he played extremely well,” Murray said. “But I didn’t really help myself. I served poorly at the end of the first set and all through the second.”<\/p>\n

Nadal beat French Open champion Stan Wawrinka in his opening match, and will next face already-eliminated David Ferrer on Friday. Murray will play Wawrinka on the same day for the other spot in the semifinals.<\/p>\n

In Wednesday’s late match at the O2 Arena, Wawrinka overcame an early break in the first set to beat Ferrer 7-5, 6-2.<\/p>\n

For Nadal, his play so far at the tournament has been a continuation of his late season improvement during a year in which he has lost 19 times, a relatively staggering number for him.<\/p>\n

Even at the French Open, a tournament he has won a record nine times, Nadal lost in the quarterfinals. But since his third round exit at the U.S. Open, things have gotten better. He is now 15-4 since then.<\/p>\n

“Just another step for me (to) be able to play at that level against such a great player is good news,” Nadal said. “Just want to try to keep working the same way to keep confirming that I am in the completely right direction.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

LONDON – Andy Murray was struggling, both with his serve and his hair. He gave himself a little trim during …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":65048,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[9230],"class_list":["post-65047","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-uploads","mauthors-chris-lehourites","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65047","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65047"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65047\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}